Simon Wharton who runs Virtuaffinity and David Thomas. Dave is the memory man and one of his claims to fame is being a guest on the Ophra Wimfrey show. The sad man can also remember 50 odd packs of cards. I know , I once sat there and watched him. It made watching paint dry so much fun!!
Simon is a man who understands web-based marketing. Top man who I recommend highly
They have been discussing my e-newsletter and website strategies and out of the goodness of their hearts looking for the best way for me to move forward.
Aren’t people good?
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HOLIDAY TIME
Signing off now for a week or so. I have no plans to diary my holiday activities…well not unless I come up with a great networking story!!
I thought it might be enlightening to some to have a scan of the conversation between myself and David. Same hymn sheet, diferent nuances.
First From David
Hiya Simon (and Will)
I agree with the concept of getting people to the site then selling from there. Ultimately, just getting people to click through to your site is a much bigger deal than it sounds and those that do should be treated like a long lost uncle who has just won the Lottery.
What I find fascinating though is that the top marketers that I am following do not follow a traditional newsletter approach. They e-mail their lists more often but with just a single bite sized piece of information, sometimes very brief. Their thinking is that you need to create a ‘presence’ in people’s minds by a drip-drip process. Sounds like you are bugging people but if done right, the opposite happens.
People really value what you do because it respects their time and the number reading and opening increases significantly.
The issue here is that the vast majority just delete a newsletter even when they have double opted in. Almost no-one checks to see how many open theirs so just assume that it must be high. This is the fatal error.
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And now me
Interesting thoughts. I tend to sit in the “email them when you have something to say” camp. From a personal point of view, I get bored when I get too much mail from one source. I feel spammed. Having said that, I am not everybody of course. If I want to know what someone is upto all the time, I’ll take the RSS feed. But how many people know about RSS who aren’t in our game as it were? It’s an area where marketers, web professionals and tech heads are comfortable. I’m keen to move Will on to Podcasting, which may seem even more fringe but my thinking is that the BBC are pushing it which will gain huge exposure and the MP3 player is becoming ubiquitous.
We’d also like to do some Rich Media content on the site perhaps deployed as Flash movies which again uses ubiquitous technology
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And David Again
You are right that most people are not aware but as with everything, you can offer the lot even if only a few people are going to use it. To me, the benefit of RSS feed is that the ones who will use it are probably really keen on me and very Internet savvy. That is my definition of a perfect customer. Look at this way, if only 1% sign up for my RSS feed and all of them buy every product I produce then I have a business model all on its own.
As for podcasting I think that is a strange term too for what is effectively just a piece of audio to listen to. The audio pieces I receive just simply say, “Here is an interview. Click to play or right click, go Save Target As and save on your computer or MP3 player and listen at your leisure.” Dead simple.
I understand your worries over spamming but to me there is a world of difference between unsolicited e-mail and someone giving you too much content. What pisses me off is when people send me stuff that has no value. Now that’s different.
I would be careful about video. There is still a hell of a lot of people who are not on Broadband.